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The Book of the Diner is well worth preserving. I only wish it had reached a broader audience when it might have mattered more. That is a testament to the blindness of our culture. If there is a future to look back from, one difficult question historians will have to ask is how we let this happen, when so many saw it coming. This site has certainly aggregated enough information and critical thinking to prove that.[/b]

AuthorTopic: Knarf's Knewz Channel (Read 1809302 times)

Embattled Sen. Al Franken will make an announcement Thursday, his office told reporters, as calls for the Minnesota Democrat's resignation -- led by female senators and later including party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer -- rapidly gained momentum Wednesday.Thirty-two Democratic senators -- 13 female and 19 male -- called on Franken to resign as allegations of sexual harassment against him continue to mount. Republican Sen. Susan Collins also called on Franken to quit.

In a statement on Facebook, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand wrote: "While Senator Franken is entitled to have the Ethics Committee conclude its review, I believe it would be better for our country if he sent a clear message that any kind of mistreatment of women in our society isn't acceptable by stepping aside to let someone else serve."

Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Kamala Harris of California, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii also joined in the call for Franken to resign.

Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania was the first male Democratic senator to call on Franken to resign just after noon Wednesday. Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, Tom Carper of Delaware, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio also called for Franken to step down. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois -- the Democratic whip -- also called on Franken to resign just before 1 p.m. ET. Independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who both caucus with the Democrats, also called for him to resign."I consider Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments, but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately," Schumer said in a statement that went out just before 5 p.m. ET.

The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating Franken following an account described by Leeann Tweeden, a morning news anchor on KABC radio in Los Angeles, which described Franken groping and forcibly kissing her during a USO tour in 2006, before Franken became a senator. After that initial account, several other women came forward to say Franken inappropriately touched them. Franken has repeatedly apologized about behavior that he said "crossed a line" for some women. The second-term senator has also said that he has taken thousands of photos with people over the years and that while he doesn't remember specific pictures or campaign events, any inappropriate behavior was unintentional.At least six women -- three named and three unnamed -- have accused Franken of inappropriately touching them. The most recent accusation came in a Politico report Wednesday, in which, a woman who chose not to be identified alleged Franken tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006. Franken released a statement categorically denying the accusation. "This allegation is categorically not true and the idea that I would claim this as my right as an entertainer is preposterous," the Minnesota senator said. "I look forward to fully cooperating with the ongoing ethics committee investigation." CNN has not verified the accusations in the Politico report.

person familiar with the conversations told CNN Schumer called Franken after the Politico story published and told him he needed to step down.​ The person said Schumer subsequently had a series of conversations with Franken about stepping down throughout Wednesday.The calls for Franken to resign come one day after Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan announced he would retire immediately. Conyers had also faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment by former employees, accusations Conyers vehemently he denied.

So Roy Moore gets to be in the Senate because (so far) nobody can find a smoking gun that proves he slept with teenagers when he was a young prosecutor (even though it's fairly obvious that he did) , but Al Franken is out because he admitted he made a fool out of himself with women.

The straw that broke the camel's back was apparently a new accusation today that Franken once grabbed this woman and tried to kiss her, back when he was just a famous working comedian. Oh the horror!

I'm telling you, the Democratic Party is so incredibly fucked up.This "zero tolerance for sexual harassment" policy is political suicide. All the male Democratic Senators and Congressmen might as well dress like women, put on lipstick, and beg the Donald to spank them. What a boatload of total morons.

The climate change simulations that best capture current planetary conditions are also the ones that predict the most dire levels of human-driven warming, according to a statistical study released in the journal Nature Wednesday.

The study, by Patrick Brown and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif., examined the high-powered climate change simulations, or “models,” that researchers use to project the future of the planet based on the physical equations that govern the behavior of the atmosphere and oceans.

The researchers then looked at what the models that best captured current conditions high in the atmosphere predicted was coming. Those models generally predicted a higher level of warming than models that did not capture these conditions as well.

The study adds to a growing body of bad news about how human activity is changing the planet’s climate and how dire those changes will be. But according to several outside scientists consulted by The Washington Post, while the research is well-executed and intriguing, it’s also not yet definitive.

“The study is interesting and concerning, but the details need more investigation,” said Ben Sanderson, a climate expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Brown and Caldeira are far from the first to study such models in a large group, but they did so with a twist.

In the past, it has been common to combine together the results of dozens of these models, and so give a range for how much the planet might warm for a given level of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. That’s the practice of the leading international climate science body, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Instead, Brown and Caldeira compared these models’ performance with recent satellite observations of the actual atmosphere and, in particular, of the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation that ultimately determines the Earth’s temperature. Then, they tried to determine which models performed better.

“We know enough about the climate system that it doesn’t necessarily make sense to throw all the models in a pool and say, we’re blind to which models might be good and which might be bad,” said Brown, a postdoc at the Carnegie Institution.

The research found the models that do the best job capturing the Earth’s actual “energy imbalance,” as the authors put it, are also the ones that simulate more warming in the planet’s future.

Under a high warming scenario in which large emissions continue throughout the century, the models as a whole give a mean warming of 4.3 degrees Celsius (or 7.74 degrees Fahrenheit), plus or minus 0.7 degrees Celsius, for the period between 2081 and 2100, the study noted. But the best models, according to this test, gave an answer of 4.8 degrees Celsius (8.64 degrees Fahrenheit), plus or minus 0.4 degrees Celsius.

Overall, the change amounted to bumping up the projected warming by about 15 percent. The researchers presented this figure to capture the findings:

When it comes down to the question of why the finding emerged, it appears that much of the result had to do with the way different models handled one of the biggest uncertainties in how the planet will respond to climate change.

“This is really about the clouds,” said Michael Winton, a leader in the climate model development team at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who discussed the study with The Post but was not involved in the research.

Clouds play a crucial role in the climate because among other roles, their light surfaces reflect incoming solar radiation back out to space. So if clouds change under global warming, that will in turn change the overall climate response.

How clouds might change is quite complex, however, and as the models are unable to fully capture this behavior due to the small scale on which it occurs, the programs instead tend to include statistically based assumptions about the behavior of clouds. This is called “parameterization.”

But researchers aren’t very confident that the parameterizations are right. “So what you’re looking at is, the behavior of what I would say is the weak link in the model,” Winton said.

This is where the Brown and Caldeira study comes in, basically identifying models that, by virtue of this programming or other factors, seem to do a better job of representing the current behavior of clouds. However, Winton and two other scientists consulted by The Post all said that they respected the study’s attempt, but weren’t fully convinced.

Sanderson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, was concerned that the current study might find an effect that wasn’t actually there, in part because models are not fully independent of one another — they tend to overlap in many areas.

“This approach is designed to find relationships between future temperatures and things we can observe today,” he said. “The problem is we don’t have enough models to be confident that the relationships are robust. The fact that models from different institutions share components makes this problem worse, and the authors haven’t really addressed this fully.”

“It’s great that people are doing this well and we should continue to do this kind of work — it’s an important complement to assessments of sensitivity from other methods,” added Gavin Schmidt, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “But we should always remember that it’s the consilience of evidence in such a complex area that usually gives you robust predictions.”

Schmidt noted future models might make this current finding disappear — and also noted the increase in warming in the better models found in the study was relatively small.

Lead study author Brown argued, though, that the results have a major real world implication: They could mean the world can emit even less carbon dioxide than we thought if it wants to hold warming below the widely accepted target of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). This would mean shrinking the “carbon budget.”

The study “would imply that to stabilize temperature at 2 degrees Celsius, you’d have to have 15 percent less cumulative CO2 emissions,” he said.

The world can ill afford that — as it is, it is very hard to see how even the current carbon budget can be met. The world is generally regarded as being off track when it comes to cutting its emissions, and with continuing economic growth, the challenge is enormous.

In this sense, that the new research will have to win acceptance may be at least a temporary reprieve for policymakers, who would be in a tough position indeed if it were shown to be definitively right.

Conservationists had hoped to protect the 138 acres of pineland being targeted for a Walmart shopping center and apartments and restore it as they had nearby Larry and Penny Thompson Park.

Federal wildlife managers on Tuesday cleared the way for a Walmart-anchored strip mall in one of the world’s rarest forests, a tract of vanishing pine rockland inhabited by butterflies, bats, snakes and fragile wildflowers found no place else.

In approving a conservation plan, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they do not expect the sprawling box store and mall, a parking lot or 900 apartments to threaten the survival of more than 20 endangered plants and animals — including the Miami tiger beetle — that live in the pineland. The approved plan divides what was once about 90 acres of forest scattered across 138 acres near Zoo Miami into two 20-plus acre preserves connected by a pathway, with the mall and apartments at the center.

The plan differs little from the proposal submitted by a Palm Beach County developer two years ago, despite more than 3,000 comments filed by critics with the agency during the review.

“What you have to realize is you’re talking about a private property owner’s rights,” said spokesman Ken Warren. “The Endangered Species Act is a tool we use to work with them to allow them to find a way to pursue their interests. It’s a delicate balance.”

But conservationists and neighbors say that far from being balanced, the decision disregarded the Act’s aim to provide a safety net for imperiled plants and animals.

“It’s got to be one of the greatest derelictions of duty by the Service in South Florida and that’s because there’s so many endangered species,” said Jaclyn Lopez, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Service also allowed developer Peter Cummings and his environmental consultant to develop their own formula to calculate damage caused by the project.

“They used this completely novel, untested, unscientific valuation matrix to cover the loss of these species which are already on the brink of extinction,” Lopez said. “There was no math or scientific explanation. It’s sort of like this black box of information.”

The Bartram’s hairstreak butterfly is one of two endangered butterflies that live in pineland.

Cummings, president of Ram Realty, said through a spokesman that the project underwent extensive review that included increasing the amount of conservation land and reduced commercial development by 75,000 square feet.

When Cummings unveiled the project in 2014, criticism was swift from conservationists who had long hoped to protect the land under a Miami-Dade County program that had helped create Larry and Penny Thompson Park on 270 acres of nearby pineland. The University of Miami had been given the parcel, part of a former blimp base, by the U.S. government to use for educational purposes and for years left it largely undeveloped, using a few buildings and cages for primate research.

The university had planned to build an academic village, but after it ran into financial problems and the educational deed restriction expired, UM sold the land to Cummings for $22 million.

Only about two percent of the pine rockland that once covered South Florida’s spiny ridge remains, leaving little habitat for a host of native animals and plants that include the gopher tortoise, bonneted bat and indigo snake. Over the past three years, a number have been added to the endangered species list, including two butterflies, two ground herbs and the Miami tiger beetle, which was rediscovered on the property decades after researchers thought it had gone extinct.

In 2007, researchers discovered the rare tiger beetle living in the pineland now slated for the shopping center.

Nearby residents have also sued to stop the project, claiming they weren’t properly notified. The project went largely unnoticed until a team of plant experts allowed onto the property to collect rare plants found far more than initial county surveys revealed. That case is still pending.

When asked when Cummings planned to start work, spokesman Ray Casas pointed to a December memo from County Mayor Carlos Gimenez saying the project could move forward once wildlife managers signed off on the conservation plan. On Tuesday, nearby workers said land-clearing equipment was already parked on the property.

The sudden announcement also angered conservationists who have been following and weighing in on the process over the last three years.

“No heads up? No delay to give people time to look at this knowing it’s very controversial?” asked attorney Dennis Olle, a board member of the North American Butterfly Association’s Miami chapter. “This might as well have come from the real estate and developers association or whatever you call them. These are our tax funds going to someone who’s supposed to protect our environment.”

Scromiting' is becoming an all-too-familiar site at emergency roomsThe condition, called Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS), is not yet properly understoodMedical experts believe the symptoms appear from individuals using or consuming heavy amounts of marijuana over a long period of time Doctors note that the condition could stem from the body being over saturated by cannabinoids, affecting the hypothalamusDr Aimee Moulin said she has seen a rise in cases since California legalized recreational marijuana last November

Chronic cannabis users are at risk of experiencing a horrifying new condition that is being reported at hospitals across the country.

'Scromiting,' doctors say, is becoming an all-too-familiar site at emergency rooms, with patients 'screaming and vomiting' as they turn up for help.

The condition, called Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS), is not properly understood but medical experts believe the symptoms appear from individuals using or consuming heavy amounts of marijuana over a long period of time.

Dr Aimee Moulin, an emergency room physician at UC-Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, said she has seen a rise in cases since California legalized recreational marijuana last November.

She expects to see a further rise after commercial sales are permitted starting in January.

'I've cried out for my mom, who's been dead for 20 years, mentally not realizing she can't come to me.'

Little research has been conducted on the topic, but one study found that for scromiting to occur, cannabis users would have to consume marijuana three to five times per day to develop CHS.

Doctors note that the condition could stem from the body being over saturated by cannabinoids, affecting the hypothalamus

'In one study the average duration of cannabis use prior to onset of recurrent vomiting was... 3.4 years,' the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) report added.

‘The syndrome was first described in 2004 by Allen and colleagues and is characterized by chronic cannabis use, cyclic episodes of nausea and vomiting, and the learned behavior of hot bathing,’ doctors wrote.

Medical experts note that the condition could stem from the body being over saturated by cannabinoids - chemical compounds that acts on cannabinoid receptors located in the brain.

The build up the cannabinoids, doctors believe, affect the function of the hypothalamus, which regulates digestion and body temperature.

In Colorado, Dr. Kennon Heard, an emergency physician at the University of Colorado in Aurora said they are diagnosing more cases however he doesn't believe cases increased after recreational use was legalized in 2012, because chronic users probably already had medical marijuana cards.

Never heard of it. My knee jerk reaction is that if heavy cannabis smoking caused this kind of symptom, I'd have had it by 1990, when (after smoking for 20 years) I voluntarily withdrew from cannabis entirely for 18 years. At that time I was smoking a lot of cannabis, it was high quality, and I wasn't even getting high anymore, or at least I no longer noticed a difference between being high and being "normal".

I vote bullshit. Many times crazy people smoke dope and then behave like crazy people. Imagine that.

Ya Know.

I really don't like writing about being an old fart but I've been rocking the gange better than forty years now and I'm doing fine.

Excuse me I'm going to take a puff off my 'vape pen'.

OK I'm back.

The truth about long term cannabis use is that after decades you adapt to it and it does not affect your mentation as most users are affected. I can even do math problems 'stoned' now. It gives me a good feeling and that's about it. RE can attest to this. I have to call total bullshit on this article.

"'I've cried out for my mom, who's been dead for 20 years, mentally not realizing she can't come to me.' "

Something like that might happen the first time someone gets high with no tolerance, like when they are 16 years old. I say might because such a reaction is highly unlikely. Most people have a good time. The rest fall asleep. If 'crying out' were true people would not get high and we would have heard about this syndrome long long ago. There have been chronic heavy users for a long long time, millions of them. Another dead giveaway is nausea and vomiting. People consume marijuana to suppress such symptoms.

I'm taking another puff. I should really get to the gym and work out. I hope I don't throw up on the way.

There is a particular very British form of Cannabis Nazi. I have seen them before. They are total anti-drug zealots. Britain has a big drug problem particularly with designer drugs. Leave it to the Cannabis Nazi to consider all drugs the same but the truth is Cannabis is in a class by itself. Cannabis has the highest median lethal dose or LD50 of all drugs. Way above any competitors cannabis is the safest drug you can take. Reason, Cannabinoids naturally occur in the body. We actually share DNA with the marijuana plant. True fact.

For shallow minds ends justify means so they lie to get what they want.

Embattled Sen. Al Franken will make an announcement Thursday, his office told reporters, as calls for the Minnesota Democrat's resignation -- led by female senators and later including party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer -- rapidly gained momentum Wednesday.Thirty-two Democratic senators -- 13 female and 19 male -- called on Franken to resign as allegations of sexual harassment against him continue to mount. Republican Sen. Susan Collins also called on Franken to quit.

In a statement on Facebook, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand wrote: "While Senator Franken is entitled to have the Ethics Committee conclude its review, I believe it would be better for our country if he sent a clear message that any kind of mistreatment of women in our society isn't acceptable by stepping aside to let someone else serve."

Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Kamala Harris of California, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii also joined in the call for Franken to resign.

Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania was the first male Democratic senator to call on Franken to resign just after noon Wednesday. Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, Tom Carper of Delaware, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio also called for Franken to step down. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois -- the Democratic whip -- also called on Franken to resign just before 1 p.m. ET. Independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who both caucus with the Democrats, also called for him to resign."I consider Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments, but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately," Schumer said in a statement that went out just before 5 p.m. ET.

The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating Franken following an account described by Leeann Tweeden, a morning news anchor on KABC radio in Los Angeles, which described Franken groping and forcibly kissing her during a USO tour in 2006, before Franken became a senator. After that initial account, several other women came forward to say Franken inappropriately touched them. Franken has repeatedly apologized about behavior that he said "crossed a line" for some women. The second-term senator has also said that he has taken thousands of photos with people over the years and that while he doesn't remember specific pictures or campaign events, any inappropriate behavior was unintentional.At least six women -- three named and three unnamed -- have accused Franken of inappropriately touching them. The most recent accusation came in a Politico report Wednesday, in which, a woman who chose not to be identified alleged Franken tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006. Franken released a statement categorically denying the accusation. "This allegation is categorically not true and the idea that I would claim this as my right as an entertainer is preposterous," the Minnesota senator said. "I look forward to fully cooperating with the ongoing ethics committee investigation." CNN has not verified the accusations in the Politico report.

person familiar with the conversations told CNN Schumer called Franken after the Politico story published and told him he needed to step down.​ The person said Schumer subsequently had a series of conversations with Franken about stepping down throughout Wednesday.The calls for Franken to resign come one day after Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan announced he would retire immediately. Conyers had also faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment by former employees, accusations Conyers vehemently he denied.

So Roy Moore gets to be in the Senate because (so far) nobody can find a smoking gun that proves he slept with teenagers when he was a young prosecutor (even though it's fairly obvious that he did) , but Al Franken is out because he admitted he made a fool out of himself with women.

The straw that broke the camel's back was apparently a new accusation today that Franken once grabbed this woman and tried to kiss her, back when he was just a famous working comedian. Oh the horror!

I'm telling you, the Democratic Party is so incredibly fucked up.This "zero tolerance for sexual harassment" policy is political suicide. All the male Democratic Senators and Congressmen might as well dress like women, put on lipstick, and beg the Donald to spank them. What a boatload of total morons.

How do you spell self-destruct?

Totally out of control. I'm truly baffled. I too have been an accused.

A 'friend' of Mrs. Dog who also knew her mother went to Mrs. Dog's mother and told her mother she was fucking me. My mother in law, who never liked me at all, loved her daughter and was not going to devastate Mrs. Dog without checking the story out first. She soon learned that I could not possibly have been with this 'friend' when claimed because I was somewhere else and Ramona knew it. That was twenty five years ago.

The same length of time which has passed since Mrs. Dog has talked to her 'friend' Debbie. As long as either of us has seen or talked to her. We know where she is and have had our way of keeping track of Debbie through the years. She has not had a good life need I say more. The two had gone to High School together and had known each other about a decade. Debbie has mental problems and she gets off on ruining marriages. She has ruined several.

There was also a time when a woman insisted I fuck her after a date. I drove her to her own place after having dinner with her. She pulled me in her door, she did not ask. I was 22 at the time and so was she. I had been enamored with Diane and had been trying to get her out on a date for months. When I finally got the courage up to ask her out she said yes and I was elated. Diane got pregnant after our date and told her mother I had raped her. Then she got an abortion. I knew nothing. After our date she had not had anything to do with me. Shunned I was devastated for I had really liked Debbie. Alone and hurt I fucking cried. I liked her so much that I did not want to have sex with her at all on our first date only to be another notch in her belt. Diane was popular. The nearest person I can think of to describe Diane to you would be Daryl Hannah with lose morals, at 22.

I worked at a gas station at the time in Poulsbo WA and a coworker and friend was friendly with Diane's sister. I had not known what had happened but Diane's sister who knew the rape story was total bullshit spilled the beans to my friend Ray months later and then Ray told me the story.

Diane had also told a married couple she spent a lot of time with who I had also known but just a little. Suddenly they treated me like shit. They never got the right story and probably still think I'm an asshole. I had gone out of my way to be friendly with the husband not understanding what was going on. They were not telling me anything. If I ever saw Larry again I'd demand we have a talk. Last time I saw him I was still in the dark about what Diane had done to me.

Women lie. Women are people and they are every bit as evil and deluded as men can be.

Our nation has lost it's collective mind. Suddenly memories years old have morphed into monstrous stories and due process and critical analysis are no longer tools of our culture. I find the naivety of this misplaced anger against Trump shocking. The stupidity and ignorance appalling.

If you are wondering, I never had sex with Debbie. Something didn't feel right when given the opportunity and I turned her down. It always has to feel right for me. At the time Debbie was a fox.

The last time I saw Debbie was after Mrs. Dog had collected a pile of gifts Debbie had given her and put them all in a pillowcase. She told me to take them to Debbie's Apartment and give them to her. I did and on the way I decided a strategic slap across Debbie"s face would be the only way to stop her madness. The only way to stop this crazy bitch would be to make her afraid of me.

Dressed in a pale pink bathrobe she opened the door. Her brown curls sat softly on her shoulders, she looked at me not sure if she should smile or not. I handed her the pillowcase and she said:What's this?

All the gifts you gave Mrs. Dog.

Suddenly her face screwed about her mouth and nose and she became ugly. She said:

Is that all?

That pissed me off and according to plan I moved to give her that planned single slap on the face. Hard enough to turn red it should have been. But deftly Debbie moved away. This bitch had been slapped before. I see it clear now but I being no slapper back then I was awed and amazed by her catlike moves. Her doorway was at the bottom, of a carpeted stairway. A cream color and immaculately clean, one thing about Debbie, she always was clean. Awed and amazed as I was, instinct told me to move at her so she would be afraid. She lost her catlike grace. It worked, she was clearly afraid of me and that was all I wanted. I never actually touched her but she fell softly backward softly onto the staircase. Satisfied I left and moved to my car. But Debbie came after me. As I sat behind my steering wheel Debbie grabbed the front license plate of my small blue Toyota, planted both her feet hard on the ground in front of her and pulled backward on my license plate. Looking at me through the windshield she screamed:

All I ever wanted to do was fuck you.

At that I gave it the gas, Debbie fell forward and I was gone.

By the time I got home to Redmond, Debbie lived and still lives in Seattle, the Redmond police were at my apartment. It seems Debbie had called Mrs. Dog threatening to kill both of us as I drove back on highway 520. Mrs. Dog was mad as hell and wasn't going to take it any more. The police were talking to Debbie on the phone and it was being made clear to her that we were to be left alone. Debbie's madness was quite apparent but I'm sure the Redmond police had it in their mind that I had boned Debbie.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday approved up to $77 million to fund repairs of communication networks and restore services in storm-lashed Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

As of Tuesday, almost two weeks after Hurricane Maria walloped Puerto Rico, knocking out its electric grid - nearly 90 percent of cell phone sites on the island remained out of service. Almost 70 percent of cell towers remained out in the U.S. Virgin Islands, with little progress made over the last week.

The fund provides federal subsidies to companies to make communications services more accessible and affordable in places where the cost is high.

The five-member FCC unanimously approved “up to seven months of their normal federal support in advance - right now, in a lump sum - to help them repair their networks and restore service to consumers,” Pai said.

Child sexual assault is the most repulsive of crimes, and the global verdict on rapists and molesters should be overwhelmingly damning. But if you’re surprised that the president of the United States and the Republican National Committee are throwing their support to a man who has been accused by multiple women, on the record, of pedophilia, remember that America has been looking the other way for a long time.

Why, for example, is the Pentagon suppressing a congressionally mandated independent report on Afghan allies who allegedly engage in systemic child sexual abuse?

Afghanistan has revived an old and long-outlawed practice of men buying young boys, dressing them as dancing girls to be used as sex slaves for American-armed Afghan security forces. The boys are regularly raped by these American allies, engaging in “bacha bazi,” or “boy play,” while U.S. soldiers avert their eyes and try to ignore the raw violence against underage innocents.

A recent analysis suggests that the U.S. military is preventing the report’s release to avoid in-country blowback and consequential congressional action that could cut-off U.S. military assistance to Afghanistan.

While the Kabul regime may be the most egregious offender at passively condoning pedophilia, another open secret is that child sex tourism finds a home firmly within allied Southeast Asian nations. American citizens often travel to countries like Thailand to solicit sexual favor with children. Weak police enforcement and even official complicity in some Southeast Asian countries make combating child sex offenses extremely difficult.

Tactical advantage and strategic concerns often define how America deals with child sex issues both at home and abroad. Whether it’s President Donald Trump’s support for Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race, the U.S. troops’ failure to report allies’ involvement in human rights abuses and criminality, or a brisk sex tourism business with allies in strategic parts of the world, legal and ethical actions are often overruled by politics. Globally, moral outrage over sexual misconduct with minors is selectively expressed – whether in America’s malls, Kandahar parlors, or Japanese townships. Political fortune is constantly weighed against criminal behavior in a dark and often cynical calculus.

There should, however, be no equivocation, anywhere, ever. Ivanka Trump is right when she says “there’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children.”

A couple of American soldiers personally brought that hell to offending Afghans. Two soldiers were discharged for beating-up an Afghan commander who chained a boy to his bed and repeatedly raped him. Vigilante justice is not a solution, but these soldiers' anger drove them to take matters into their own hands when their superiors instead insisted they sit on their hands.

The U.S. military may be reluctant to release the new report and slow to respond to accusations and missteps, but unlike most other countries’ militaries, processes are in place for the Pentagon to take corrective action, change, and attempt to right any wrongs. While U.S. soldiers avoid policing illegal behavior of natives in foreign countries, Americans are sometimes held criminally accountable for their acts by foreign courts.

In 1995, for example, the American service members were caught, convicted, and sentenced to many years in a Japanese prison for kidnapping and raping a 12-year old Okinawan girl. Twenty-two years later, the Okinawa rape case is still fresh in Japanese minds and it continues to plague U.S.-Japanese military relations. Those old wounds were reopened just last week when an American military contractor received a life sentence in Japan for the rape and murder of yet another Okinawan.

Japanese high moral ground is hard to hold, however, when reflecting on the country’s own sordid history of sex slaves and industrial-scale rape. From 1932 through WWII, Japan enslaved underage girls and young women from occupied territories in military brothels for forced sex. While there is no definitive victim count, the “comfort women” numbered at least 20,000 and may have reached into the hundreds of thousands.

The military and foreign service get special protections when serving overseas – diplomatic immunity can protect a State Department employee from foreign legal infractions. But the U.S. can waive that immunity in special cases, as it did with the American service members in Japan. Foreign courts can also lock-up Americans’ who transgress overseas. Further, since 2004, American law allows U.S. courts to convict citizens of sex crimes committed abroad.

American child sex offenders who go overseas to engage in criminal activity can be punished when they come home, but they are also more likely to be prevented from achieving their goal when traveling. The U.S State Department will soon make important changes in U.S. passports, as required by last year’s International Megan’s Law. Some passports will have a notation that states “The bearer was convicted of a sex offense against a minor.”

The scarlet letter passport may slow sex offenders from moving freely across the world, but it would still not prevent them from running for government office. One Alabama felon put up a candidacy in the recent past.

The electoral verdict on Roy Moore is days away. Internationally, beyond the Moore scandal, American conduct and honor in the Trump-era will continue to be judged daily.

Henry Ford Health System announced this week a data breach of health information that involves nearly 20,000 patients. It is "unclear" if any of the compromised information has been used "inappropriately."

"We are very sorry this happened. We take very seriously any misuse of patient information, and we are continuing our own internal investigation to determine how this happened and to ensure no other patients are impacted," the hospital wrote in a news release this week, noting that they learned of the incident on October 3 after the e-mail credentials of a group of employees were also compromised.

"... Someone gained access to or stole the e-mail credentials of a group of employees," a release on the breach stated, explaining that patient health information was inside of these employee e-mail accounts.

It is still unclear if any of the information that was "viewed or stolen" has been used for any inappropriate use, the hospital stated adding that Social Security numbers and credit card info was not included in the data breach. What was compromised was information such as patient names, birthdates, medical record numbers, provider names, dates of service, department names, locations, medical conditions and health insurers. A total of 18,470 patient's information was compromised.

"To reduce future risk of this happening again, we are strengthening our security protections for employees, all of whom will be educated about this measure in the coming weeks," the hospital stated, adding that they are moving forward with initiatives dealing with e-mail retention and multi-factor authentication.

This is not the first time a Detroit-area hospital has undergone a data breach. In July Detroit Medical Center announced the compromisation of health information that involved about 1,500 patients seen at one of its facilities in 2015 and 2016. In that case a staffing agency contracted by DMC had told the hospital that one of its employees had provided the information to unauthorized people who weren’t affiliated with the DMC organization.

In the case of Henry Ford Health System, the hospital will issue new medical record numbers upon request.

A cyberattack slowed county government to a crawl Wednesday in North Carolina’s most populous metro area as deputies processed jail inmates by hand, the tax office turned away electronic payments and building code inspectors switched to paper records.

Data was frozen on dozens of Mecklenburg County servers after one of its employees opened an email attachment carrying malicious software earlier this week.

County manager Dena Diorio said late Wednesday that the county will not pay the $23,000 demanded by the hacker believed to be in Ukraine or Iran. Diorio said it would have taken days to restore the county’s computer system even if officials paid off the person controlling the ransomware, so the decision won’t significantly lengthen the timeframe.

“I am confident that our backup data is secure and we have the resources to fix this situation ourselves,” said Diorio.

In the meantime, county departments were scrambling to conduct business without access to digital records.

“We are slower, but we are up and running,” Diorio said.

The county of more than 1 million residents includes Charlotte, but the city government appears not to have been compromised by the attack. The state’s largest city issued a statement that its separate computer systems have not been affected and that it severed direct connections to county computers.

The computer problems haven’t affected the processing of emergency calls because they are handled by the city, said Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Anjanette Flowers Grube.

But it’s caused delays for the county jail and disrupted other county services ranging from domestic violence counseling to tax collection. Sheriff Irwin Carmichael said it’s taking longer to manually process arrestees, as well as inmates due to be released.

Calls to a county domestic violence hotline are rolling straight to voicemail, so counselors are checking messages every 15 minutes, officials told reporters. And the social services department is working to recreate its daily itinerary of 1,600 rides for elderly patients with medical appointments. Recurring appointments that account for most of the rides are less of a problem than those for patients who make one-time reservations.

Patty Eagan, director of Mecklenburg County Social Services, said there are “300 trips that are medical demand, and that’s when someone has scheduled a trip a week ago, two weeks ago. We are not able to see what trips have been scheduled.”

Meanwhile, payments to the tax office must be made with a check, cash or money order, and code inspectors are slowed down by using paper records, according to a list of affected services.

Diorio said county computers began to suffer Monday from the attack, which was publicly revealed the next day. A forensic examination shows 48 of the county’s 500 servers were affected, Diorio said, adding that county government officials believe that the hacker wasn’t able to gain access to individuals’ health, credit card or social security information.

The compromised servers have been quarantined, and even potentially healthy parts of the system were shut down to avoid spreading the malicious program, said Keith Gregg, the county’s chief information officer. But without getting the compromised servers unlocked, the county will have to rebuild significant parts of the system.

Diorio said county technology officials will use backup data from before the ransomware attack to restore the system, but the rebuild will take “patience and hard work.”

A security expert said cyberattacks on local governments aren’t unusual. For example, a hacking attack in late 2016 on San Francisco’s mass transit system led its operators to allow free rides over part of a weekend because of data problems.

Ross Rustici, senior director of intelligence services at the firm Cybereason, said ransomware schemes against local governments make the news every couple of months, but that they often tend to be smaller, rural areas. He said local governments are “easy targets” because of their older equipment and software.

He said businesses and local governments often pay the ransom because other means of recovering the data can be even more expensive.

“Once you’re in that situation, you really have no good option, so a lot of people and companies end up paying,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a meeting with workers of the GAZ factory in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. Putin says he will seek re-election in next March's election

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that he will officially run for office again in 2018, debunking questions and theories surrounding his delayed official announcement.

Putin, whose approval ratings hover around 80 percent, is expected to sail through the election in March. Should he win again, he would become the country’s longest serving ruler since Josef Stalin.

The announcement was made at the GAZ automobile factory in the city, Nizhny Novgorod. The factory is a symbol of the country’s industrial might, and Putin was greeted by an enthusiastic audience by the blue-collar workers who make up the core of his base.

“I couldn’t find a better place and movement,” Putin, 65, said to the crowd. “Thank you for your support. I will run for president.”

For months, Putin fended off questions about his plans for 2018, fueling speculation about why he would not say if he would seek re-election. Some theorized he might step down and name a preferred successor.

Putin is pitted against a number of candidates, including TV host Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of late St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who was Putin’s boss in the 1990s.

“I don’t trust a system where Putin makes all decisions,” Sobchak said Wednesday when she also met with voters in Nizhny Novgorod. “Let’s believe in our ability to change the situation.”

Another contender is Alexei Navalny, who previously intended to seek office before getting arrested in June. His conviction, which he calls politically motivated, bars him from running.

The upper house of the Russian parliament is expected to authorize the start of formal election campaigning later this month.

Putin has been in power in Russia since 2000. He served two presidential terms during 2000-2008, then shifted into the prime minister's seat because of term limits. As prime minister, he still called the shots while his ally, Dmitry Medvedev, served as the placeholder president.

Medvedev had the president's term extended to six years and then stepped down to let Putin reclaim the office in 2012. If Putin serves another six-year term, which would run through 2024, he would reach the milestone of having the longest tenure since Stalin, who ruled for nearly 30 years.

All year, legislators have been bracing for a major fight over NSA surveillance. The 2015 bill that reauthorized the Patriot Act is set to expire on December 31st of this year. That would leave just a few weeks left to replace it and potentially add new restrictions to the NSA’s sprawling surveillance powers as part of the deal.

Now, it looks like legislators may have more time than they thought. According to a New York Times report today, the White House believes the Patriot Act’s surveillance provisions won’t expire until four months into 2018. Lawyers point to a one-year certification that was granted on April 26th of last year. If that certification is taken as a legal authorization for the FISA court overall — as White House lawyers suggest — then Congress will have another four months to work out the details of reauthorization.

There are already several proposals for Patriot Act reauthorization in the Senate, which focus the Section 702 provisions that authorize certain types of NSA surveillance. Some of the proposals would close the backdoor search loophole that allows for warrantless surveillance of US citizens, although a recent House proposal would leave it in place. But with Congress largely focused on tax cuts and the looming debt ceiling fight, it’s unlikely the differences could be reconciled before the end of the year.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a longtime NSA critic, applauded the new deadline when reached by the Times, saying, “Anything now that creates an opportunity for several months of real debate, I’ll listen to."

Many of India's top tech start-ups are establishing a lobbying group, called Indiatech, to push for governmental regulations to curb global firms' continued success in the country. "The end goal is to help Indian companies get preferential treatment," an executive at one of the founding members of the group told CNBC. "India is effectively letting modern world East India Companies own its Internet," Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of e-commerce and electronic payment company Paytm, recently said in a Twitter post.

Many of India's top tech start-ups are establishing a lobbying group to push for governmental regulations to put an end to global companies' continued success in the country.

The group, called Indiatech, will begin its operations early next year. Chief among its agenda is to coax the government in New Delhi into passing regulations to help local companies dominate the country's internet market, industry sources told CNBC.

The new group represents an aggressive new strategy for a local industry that has been scrambling to compete with global giants — and repeatedly come up short. If the lobbying efforts are successful, they could benefit domestic firms while squeezing out big-name companies like Amazon and Uber from the hugely promising market.

Online retailer Flipkart, Uber rival Ola and messaging app Hike are among the Indian tech companies behind the new lobbying effort. Local grocery marketplace Grofers, travel booking service MakeMyTrip, online classifieds platform Quikr and VC firms Matrix and Kalaari have also joined the organization, people familiar with the matter said.

"If one of the participating members went to the government with a proposal of this kind, it will not be taken seriously," said one source with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity as he wasn't authorized to speak to the press. "But if an industry lobby body, which represents nearly all of the local giants, makes a suggestion, it will be heard."Stumbling unicorns

On paper, Flipkart appears to have moved beyond its 2016 struggles to raise money: It secured $4 billion from a myriad of global investors including SoftBank, Microsoft and eBay this year — albeit at a valuation of $11.6 billion from $15 billion two years ago.

But while Flipkart was struggling to raise capital, rival Amazon doubled down on its India bet by pumping $3 billion into the local operations. The announcement bolstered Amazon's total planned investment in the country, which it entered in 2013, to $5 billion.

The results of that strategy are clear: During the important festival of Diwali, a period traditionally crucial for retail companies in the country, Amazon India surpassed Flipkart in sales for the first time.

E-commerce isn't the only sector seeing a showdown: Other Indian unicorns such as ride-hailer Ola and messaging app Hike are also struggling to put up a strong fight against global rivals, such as Uber and Facebook's WhatsApp, respectively. Those firms, along with others from the U.S., China and Europe, have entered India with huge supplies of capital at their disposal.

The darlings of India's tech startups have attempted to put up a brave front by offering lofty discounts and expanding their portfolios, but the formation of the lobbying group shows their new strategy is to seek the government's protection from the global onslaught.

The organization would convince the government to make the "right policies, and bring to their notice the interventions and some decisions that will help us," an executive at one of the founding members of Indiatech said. "The end goal is to help Indian companies get preferential treatment," the executive added, requesting anonymity.

It's worth noting that many of the start-ups seeking protectionist regulation have benefited from international investors. In fact, some of the biggest-name members in the lobbying group — Flipkart, Ola, Hike, Grofers and Quikr — share Japan's SoftBank as an investor.

"Our intent is to work with the government to support the development of the rapidly evolving Internet ecosystem in the country and we hope the organization would facilitate this," a SoftBank spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.

Flipkart, Hike and Grofers declined to elaborate to CNBC about the rationale behind participating in the Indiatech group.Protectionism

Calls for the Indian government to intervene and protect local companies are part of a narrative in the making for more than a year. Notably, at a conference last December, Sachin Bansal, co-founder and executive chairman of Flipkart, suggested that the Indian government should do "what China did 15 years ago and tell the world we need your capital, but we don't need your companies."

Also in attendance at that conference, Bhavish Aggarwal, the CEO and founder of Ola, echoed Bansal's suggestion: "There is a narrative of innovation that non-Indian companies espouse, but the real fight is on capital, not innovation. The markets are being distorted by capital," he said at the time.

Their views were met with a mixed response from industry leaders, some of whom pointed out the irony that both Flipkart and Ola have raised much of their capital from foreign firms. Regardless, some say the stakes are too high for government inaction.

"If the government doesn't wake up, it will see Silicon Valley kill off a large segment of its entrepreneurship ecosystem and challenge its leading retail and technology companies," Vivek Wadhwa, tech entrepreneur and distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering, told CNBC.

"Foreign companies will gather massive amounts of private data about every Indian citizen — even more than the Indian government has. Facebook and Google will have the tools to sway Indian public opinion and affect elections. This is dangerous for any democracy," he added, saying he believed the government should learn from China, which he says realized very early on that if it allowed Silicon Valley giants to dominate its internet, they would hurt local companies.

Chinese companies are now rivals to Silicon Valley, and firms like Tencent and Alibaba lead the nation's internet market. Last month, China's Tencent hit a market capitalization of $500 billion.

Along those lines, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of e-commerce and electronic payment company Paytm, recently said in a Twitter post that "India is effectively letting modern world East India Companies own its Internet."

Alibaba-backed Paytm is facing heat from services by global companies. Its wallet application, used by over 200 million users in the country, has seen strong growth of late, but other companies are interested in moving in on the market. Google introduced Tez payments app for India in September, and it has already amassed 12 million customers, the company said. On top of that, Facebook's WhatsApp, used by more than 200 million users in India, is said to be considering plans to integrate a payment option in its app. Paytm declined to comment for this story.

Some warn, however, that replicating an approach similar to that of China could go terribly wrong.

"It is counterproductive to look at China selectively and cherry-pick parts of protectionism we like," said Prasanto Roy, vice president and head of the Internet, Mobile and E-commerce Council at the National Association of Software and Services Companies — an industry group set up in 1988 for India's then-nascent software and IT industry.

"Protectionism is a double-edged sword and any attempt at raising trade barriers could hurt more than help India if there is reciprocal action. Keep in mind that the $150 billion IT industry (two-third of it software and services exports) is premised on an open, non-protectionist global marketplace," he added.

Eyes are on the government now, but not everyone believes New Delhi would pass new laws to help local tech firms.

"The government wants investors and foreign companies to come to India and create more jobs and opportunities in the country. I don't think the government would take any action to hurt foreign companies in any way," said Satish Meena, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Officials at the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion weren't available to comment.A market in flux

The recent arrivals of Amazon, Uber and Netflix in India and the aggressive expansions of businesses by Facebook, Microsoft and Google have changed the dynamics of the local market. Those global firms bring some services to the table that no Indian company rivals, but they're even gaining traction in categories in which domestic firms had a first-mover advantage.

In 2015, Flipkart and Snapdeal together accounted for 75 percent of the online retail market in India, according to financial services firm Morgan Stanley. Today, however, much has changed: Flipkart and Amazon India are jockeying to be market leader, and Snapdeal, which recently ended merger talks with Flipkart to no avail, has seen its market share collapsing.

In October, Amazon India announced it had more than 44 percent of total customer share and more than 42 percent of total transactions during the festival of Diwali, citing third-party data from market research firm Kantar. Amazon credited its Prime subscription service, which it launched in India last year, for helping it bolster sales.

Similar is the fate of ride-hailing service Ola, which has been somewhat successful but only by burning capital at a fast clip to keep Uber at bay. It raised $1.1 billion this October from investors including Tencent and SoftBank at an estimated valuation of $7 billion, and it expects to raise an additional $1 billion in coming weeks.

That investment, a source familiar with the matter said, will be led by SoftBank, which plans to bet another $600 million on the company.

Ola maintains its market-leading position in the country, serving in more than 100 cities, but Uber is quickly catching up. Both the companies are trying to boost the number of rides on their platforms by subsidizing the cost of rides.

"We are growing incredibly fast, focusing on the metrics and features that matter the most: reliability, quick arrival times and the best customer service experience," an Uber spokesperson said. Ola declined to comment.

Uber India and Amazon India, for their part, have also fiercely slammed the notion that they are not Indian companies. Amazon India is a "completely India registered entity, and as Indian as any other," a spokesperson said. "We have consistently maintained our support for free support for capital movement. Free flow of capital is not only good for customers but also helps create jobs, develop infrastructure, aids the growth of small businesses and facilitates India's economic development."

Uber India said it is "led and staffed by local teams who know their cities better than anyone. We bring global expertise to India, but wouldn't have been able to get where we are today without a local-first approach."

Uber has invested north of $1 billion in the country, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said at a recent conference that the company is in heavy investment mode in India.

'Salvator Mundi', a depiction of Christ by famous artist, to be displayed in UAE in major coup

Christie’s employees view Salvator Mundi at their auction house in London on October 22.

Abu Dhabi: “Salvator Mundi,” a painting of Christ by Leonardo Da Vinci recently sold for a record $450 million (Dh1.65 billion), is heading to the Louvre Abu Dhabi in a coup for the bold new museum, it announced Wednesday.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the first museum to bear the Louvre name outside France, has been billed as “the first universal museum in the Arab world”.

“Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi is coming to #LouvreAbuDhabi,” the museum said on Twitter in Arabic, English and French, displaying an image of the 500-year-old work.

The announcement partially resolves the mystery over the painting’s sale in November in New York for $450.3 million.

Auction house Christie’s had declined to identify the buyer, only saying that it received bids from around the world.

The sale more than doubled the previous record of $179.4 million paid for Pablo Picasso’s “The Women of Algiers (Version O)” in 2015, also in New York.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi opened in November, a vast silver-toned dome designed by French architect Jean Nouvel that draws inspiration from Arab architecture.

The museum opened with some 600 pieces. Under a 30-year agreement, France provides expertise, lends works of art and organizes exhibitions in return for one billion euros ($1.16 billion).

“Salvator Mundi,” which means “Saviour of the World,” went on public display in 2011 in a dramatic unveiling at The National Gallery in London, where the work was declared to be the first newly discovered Da Vinci painting in a century.

It is one of fewer than 20 paintings generally accepted as being from the Renaissance master’s own hand, according to Christie’s.

It had sold for a mere £45 (Dh221) in 1958, when the painting was thought to have been a copy, and was lost until it resurfaced at a regional auction in 2005.

Its latest sale was initiated by Russian tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlev, the boss of football club AS Monaco.

He had bought the painting in 2013 for $127.5 million although he later accused a Swiss art dealer of overcharging him.